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SHM-CDs, anyone?

One of my favourite friends from music-freakdom, Californian Ron Kane (check out his blog at http://ronkanefiles.wordpress.com/) has been telling me about his adventures with SHM-CDs.

If you haven’t heard of them, here’s the official line: “The high quality SHM-CD (Super High Material CD) format features enhanced audio quality through the use of a special polycarbonate plastic. Using a process developed by JVC and Universal Music Japan discovered through the joint companies’ research into LCD display manufacturing, SHM-CDs feature improved transparency on the data side of the disc, allowing for more accurate reading of CD data by the CD player laser head. SHM-CD format CDs are fully compatible with standard CD players. Experience the high-fidelity audio quality of the SHM-CD format.”

Yep, another format that claims better-than-ever-before quality audio, and Mr Kane is impressed with the four discs he’s so far purchased from the only country producing SHM-CDs, Japan.

“They are remastered in 2010 in Tokyo and sound AMAZING; especially Black Sabbath. It has some hiss, but boasts 100 percent of the master-tape sound”, he writes.

“The 10cc is probably the most impressive sounding.”

Ron says that they’re actually single layer non-hybrid SA-CDs, which means they will ONLY play on SA-CD players, unlike hybrid SA-CD discs.

One of NZ's most well-regarded music writer/reviewer/editors, Gary Steel has been penning his pungent prose for close to 40 years for publications too numerous to mention. He is currently Metro magazine's music writer, and Witchdoctor's Music Editor (and co-publisher). He has strong opinions and remains unrepentant. Steel's full bio can be found here

3 Comments

Best sounding stuff: “Tommy” by The Who – sounds
like they’re in the room, clarity! Moody Blues “Days of
Future Passed” sounds like it cost millions of pounds to
record, just amazing. The Dylans all sound really good.

Even though I own a good SACD player, I wouldn’t be going out of my way to buy expensive SACD disks, let alone wildly overpriced exotic CD variants. Better to buy new and used vinyl or to look online for high res downloads IMHO.